Got news? Pelosi and Sunday-only religion

June 7, 2012 By

Often you’ll see political blogs regurgitating one another so the same storylines get pushed through the cycle. Some blogs do very good aggregation while others obviously use bait to get more clicks. Few blogs specialize in breaking new ground.

The Washington Examiner has some interesting quotes from House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi about faith, contraception and politics. The headline that got me to click in? Pelosi: “‘I do my religion on Sundays, in church”

On one hand, I applaud the blog for doing some reporting, a post that breaks new ground.

On the other hand, I’m still looking for a little bit more information, even if it’s seen through an opinion-page lens. Even though we generally don’t critique columns, blogs or stories outside of mainstream reporting, we hope information would be reported as thoroughly as possible. Here’s what we know from the post:

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., a Roman Catholic, refused to say whether she supported her church’s teaching that contraception is immoral.

“I do my religion on Sundays, in church, and I try to go other days of the week; I don’t do it at this press conference,” Pelosi said curtly as a reporter asked about her view of the church position on contraception.

When, where and in what context did she say this? How was the question asked?

Pelosi brushed off the organizations and church dioceses that filed suing the Obama administration over the contraception mandate. “I don’t think that’s the entire Catholic Church,” she said. “Those people have a right to sue, but I dont think they’re speaking ex cathedra for the Catholic Church.”

I’d like to know what exactly the questions was and exactly how she “brushed off” the organizations. Did she say anything else on the health care mandate itself? Were there any other follow-up questions, or did she shift the press conference?

The post ends with some context from Pelosi’s statements in February. Again, this isn’t terribly unusual for a blog post, and hopefully we’ll see more writers using blogs to report new information. Perhaps in the future, we could see a Q & A write up or even a video, especially since those with smartphones can record video and audio so easily.

Image via Wikimedia Commons.

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Filed Under: Catholicism, Got news?, People, Politics, Religion
  • http://!)! Passing By

    I dont think they’re speaking ex cathedra for the Catholic Church.”

    The irony drips, no doubt unconsciously, given her own pontifical pronouncements in the last paragraph of the post, and on other occasions.

  • Julia

    “I dont think they’re speaking ex cathedra for the Catholic Church.”

    That’s hysterical. Ex cathedra refers to the bishop speaking from his chair – FOR his Catholic diocese. Quite a few US Catholic bishops are speaking from their chairs. She doesn’t have a chair to speak for the Catholic church.

    She must think that only the Pope speaks “ex cathedra”. He has more authority, but so do bishops in union with him. That’s the bishop’s main job, not building schools and running bingo games.

  • Martha

    “House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., a Roman Catholic, refused to say whether she supported her church’s teaching that contraception is immoral.”

    Isn’t there something in Latin grammar about “questions that invite the answer ‘No’”?

  • http://authenticbioethics.blogspot.com AuthenticBioethics

    In the article:

    In February, Pelosi accused the bishops of falsely using religious liberty arguments to impose their ideology on the country.

    Talk about assertions that need back-up and follow-up. If the Catholic church prevails in its lawsuit, how on earth does that impose an ideology on the country? At best, the Church imposes “their ideology” on people who work for them who could work elsewhere if they wanted. Look, no one (or exceedingly few) works for the Catholic because of the money. Virtually everyone who does work for the Church could find better pay and benefits doing working somewhere else. My wife taught elementary school for about a third of what public school teachers made. And talk about forcing ideology on employees — at a public school where she taught briefly, she was forced to pay for NEA dues even though she wasn’t a member and even though the NEA actively advocates policies in direct opposition to my wife’s. The Church’s policy against sponsoring health insurance coverage of objectionable products and procedures does not force anyone to pay for anything they don’t want to buy nor does it use employee payroll deductions for purposes that they oppose. Unions on the other hand — that’s their bread and butter, and an way of extorting money to fuel political campaigns.

    Pelosi doesn’t seem to have ever complained about union dues and the imposition of ideology on the country. So it’s a bizarre position for Pelosi to hold, if she does indeed hold it (the article attributes it to her without back-up). So it’s not the idea of imposing an ideology on the country that she objects to, but which ideology it is. The ideology in question is that religions ought to be able to go about their business without government interference. Sort of the ideology that the Constitution imposes on the country.

    At any rate, Pelosi is no theologian. But the “war on women” meme is clear enough.

  • david s

    Wait, which Nancy Pelosi are we talking about here? The same one who last month said her “religion compels” here to support ‘gay’ ‘marriage’?
    <a href="http://http://cnsnews.com/news/article/pelosi-her-catholic-faith-compels-her-support-same-sex-marriage&quot; title=""

    Did she do that in church on Sunday?

  • NMH

    I thought “ex cathedra” referred to infallible declarations from the Pope, but I could be (as in “I probably am”) wrong.

    The Sunday quote, the one used for the headline, was understandable. I think her point was that she didn’t want to turn the press event into a Q&A on Catholic teaching.

  • Bill

    NMH, Julia is correct. Ex cathedra means from the chair. A cathedral is a church where the bishop has his chair.

    Maybe it wasn’t wasn’t covered in the homily on Sunday at Mrs. Pelosi’s church.

  • http://carloz.newsvine.com/ Carloz

    Pelosi did not ‘brush off’ the organizations. In fact, she said they had a right to sue. You can read the transcript of the press conference at http://www.democraticleader.gov/news/press?id=2648.

    The email field above wouldn’t accept my correct address. I can be contacted via http://carloz.newsvine.com/?more=Contact.

  • Julia

    Ex cathedra has a little different meaning with the Pope.

    Popes have very rarely made statements that are to be held as infallible. There is certain phraseology that sets those statements apart.

    Normally, speaking ex cathedra means speaking with official authority, which is not necessarily infallible. Normally, it’s the proclamation and application of official Catholic teaching. Popes rarely and bishops never make novel proclamations. Even a Pope will make what is claimed to be infallible only about matters that have already been discussed, argued and believed by most Catholics for decades or centuries.

    At a civic or organizational meeting, the chairperson is the top authority in the room. The chair has been a symbol of authority from time immemorial. Way, way back only the people most in authority had a chair. Everybody else stood or, with permission, sat on the floor or much lower & simpler seating. It’s symbolic and understood even by uneducated and illiterate people.

    In a courtroom, the judge is the one who has the authority – he or she sits on a dais of some sort and what he or she says goes. She or he is not infallible, but what he or she says or declares about the law and its application has more authority than anybody else in the room.

  • Deacon John M. Bresnahan

    She should have been probed by reporters on her stand on Church and State and her view of the First Amendment. That is what is truly relevant regarding a public official.